Last Sunday (10/23/16), Jim, Gordon and I worked in the area of the spring planting. Gary joined us later but he went snipping elsewhere. I wound up pulling up as much morning glory roots as I could on the north side of the trail. Actually, in this small area, we had planted two oceansprays a year ago. They are doing fine, as long as they are not covered by morning glory. Morning glory roots are white tuber-ish strings. In the photo, you can see that above the tool, on the left.
In the draft vegetation management plan, Nelson of EarthCorp had a section on best practices for tackling certain invasives. He covered ivy, holly, laurel and the Himalayan blackberry. In commenting on the draft, I said we needed written guidelines for what to do with morning glory. It turns out best practices have yet to be established for dealing with morning glory. Nelson actually suggested we experiment. Taking multiple areas, we should try different methods of ridding the morning glory and note the time, labor and efficacy of each. This was an intriguing suggestion. I do know exactly where I worked on Sunday so I will see how this area fares in the future. I would say what I did was probably the most time-consuming--digging out and following the roots. It's not really hard labor, though. It just takes a lot of time.
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